Producer
and record company owner Sam Phillips will always be best known for the
discovery of Elvis Presley. Yet prior to Presley and the birth of
rock & roll, Phillips played an important role in Memphis blues.

In his Sun Studio, he recorded future blues greats
B. B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Rosco Gordon, and others.As a talent scout, record
producer, and record company owner, Phillips was to Memphis blues what
Leonard and Phil Chess were to Chicago blues.

Phillips hoped to study law but instead settled
for a career in radio broadcasting and engineering. His first disc
jockey job was in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

By 1945, he was in Memphis on WREC. Five
years later, Phillips opened up the Memphis Recording Service, a small
recording studio on Union Avenue, and the short-lived Phillips' Records
with disc jockey friend Dewey Phillips (no relation).

After one release, bluesman Joe Hill Louis's "Gotta
Let You Go" backed with "Boogie in the Park," the label folded. Phillips
then cultivated a relationship with the Bihari Brothers, who were about
to launch RPM, a subsidiary of Modern, their Los Angeles-based label.

The Biharis hoped to build the new label's roster
with down-home blues talent and forged an agreement with Phillips to record
Memphis artists for RPM. One of the first blues men Phillips sent
to RPM was B. B. King. Phillips also set up an agreement with Chess
Records similar to the one he had with RPM.

In 1951, Phillips recorded "Rocket 88" by Jackie
Brenston and leased it to Chess. Often called the first rock &
roll record, "Rocket 88" went to the top of the R & B charts and forced
Chess, RPM, and other labels take a serious interest in Memphis music.

Squabbles over talent acquisition with Chess and
RPM led Phillips to rethink the idea of starting his own record company.
In late 1951, he quit his disc jockey job at WREC. In 1952, he began
Sun Records. Until the arrival of Elvis Presley and rock & roll
two years later, Sun Records was largely a blues label.

Although Phillips continued to make some blues
records after Elvis had changed the course of popular music in 1954 and
1955, he mostly recorded country and rockabilly artists. Sun scored
with records by Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison
in the mid- and late 1950s.

News of the death of Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, who
died Wednesday at 80, was met internationally with sadness and a great
deal of respect for his achievements. By Bill Ellis - The Commercial Appeal
- Full
Story

Sun Studio - official site of
the historic recording studio started by Sam Phillips.

Sun Records - official
site of the historic record label started by Sam Phillips.